Chantels' Lead Singer Dies at 84

Arlene Smith, whose teenage plea on "Maybe" turned a Bronx church-choir kid into a pillar of early girl-group music, has died at 84. Her manager and friend Paul Errante said she suffered a heart attack on July 29 in the Bronx. Smith was just 16 when she wrote and fronted the Chantels' 1957 recording of "Maybe," a slow-burning ballad that climbed to No. 15 on the Billboard pop chart and No. 2 on the R&B chart—and went on to shape a generation of female vocal groups. The label initially took her songwriting credit, reports the New York Times, a common royalty grab at the time.

Doo-wop had largely been a boys' club when the Chantels—Smith, Sonia Goring, Lois Harris, Renée Minus, and Jackie Landry—cut through with their church-bred harmonies. Their success came despite industry discomfort with both their race and gender; their debut album cover featuring the Black quintet was swapped for an image of white teens at a jukebox. The industry "didn't know what to do with us," Smith would later say. Still, "Maybe" became, as Rolling Stone later put it, a template for the girl-group explosion that followed, from the Shirelles to the Shangri-Las. Smith left the group in 1959, studied at Juilliard, became a Bronx schoolteacher, and continued to perform for decades. She is survived by her brother, Ray.